March 20, 2017

Whither Soft Power?

by wj

I had thought that there were two views about "soft power" -- influencing foreigners (individually or collectively) with persuasion rather than force or the threat of force. First, that it was an important and useful part of our foreign policy arsenal. This view has governed US foreign policy since WW II, and is still widely held amongst the US military.

Or, alternatively, that soft power was basically useless, and so there is no reason to waste money and energy on it. This latter being, I thought, that of the current administration. As reflected in the slashing of the foreign aid budget in the current proposed budget.

But I was wrong. (Or, at least, overly simplistic.) It appears that there is a third view: that it is actually a negative. And that view is impacting people today.

So only 2 months into his presidency, he's already lost 20% of the people who voted for him.

How hardcore his core supporters are is still a question in my mind. I tend to think there's at least a slim majority of those who voted for him would only turn on him if he committed some theoretical horrible act.

So what is the floor for his approval rating? And what does it mean if his approval and disapproval ratings add up to virtually 100% (i.e. almost no one neither approves nor disapproves)?

What happens if/when everyone but his core supporters disapprove of him?

How hardcore his core supporters are is still a question in my mind. I tend to think there's at least a slim majority of those who voted for him would only turn on him if he committed some theoretical horrible act.

I suspect it isn't quite what you were picturing when you wrote this. But it seems to me that the most likely "terrible act" which will turn a big tranche of his supporters is (passing and) implementing the AHCA.

When they discover that it's their health care that is getting slashed, they are not going to be happy campers. Especially after he was so emphatic about how none of them would lose health care and his plan would be so fabulous.

i'm sure that the GOP and its attendant noise machine will be hard at work convincing people that the ACA was unsustainable so they shouldn't have had that lousy insurance in the first place, and that Trump will provide for them.

and it will work, too. because, let's fact it: we're not talking about people who have shown a great capacity for critical thinking.

Normally, this would be noteworthy enough. But at least we would be sending an Deputy Secretary from the State Department. But we haven't actually got one of those yet. Well, at least we have an Acting Deputy who can attend. So what if the other NATO countries feel like they are being seen as unimportant?

The US is the dominant superpower, but that happens by and large with the consent of the other major players. The Japanese and we Europeans are happy to be allied with you. Make no mistake, even if you are the largest military player, it would be quite possible for an opposing block to form that could contain you, if you played your cards badly. It doesn't happen, because we actually like you.

All empires ghroughout the history have governed by cultivating alliances. Though the US has a vast military, you were unable to pacify Iraq, and we have, together, been futilely trying to pacify Afghanistan for 16 years. We can quite clearly say, that the US cannot occupy more than three or four medium-sized countries at the time fighting insurgencies, and even then, it is dependent on the locals doing a lot of the work. So, you cannot hope to govern the world by hard power. You need to do limit that to as few cases as possible.

Since the Second World War, you have been the best users of soft power in the world. Your numerous exchange programs make sure that future decision-makers get acquainted with your culture and have a network there. You export your culture efficiently, and it has such quality that we actually pay for it. I personally, for one, have been in the US for a number of times, have good colleagues there, and spend time writing on a US blog. This is soft power. It is the means by which you know you don't need to plan for a war against a combined coalition of EU, Japan and China. :-) (Which would, heaven forbid, mean the annihilation of life on the surface of this planet.) Compared to military buildup, soft power is cheap. You can hire a good many foreign service officers, or fund numerous exchange students at a price of a single fighter plane.

Lurker, pretty much all true. Which makes it all the more horrifying and incomprehensible that the Trumpkins are squandering all this goodwill by letting the mechanisms for this soft power degrade, and in the end, if this goes on too long, die. You'd think there was someone at the helm who wanted to destroy everything, and then play in the wreckage. And someone else, nominally at the helm, too stupid and ignorant to stop him.